I can’t decide if I’m thinking too much or not enough.
Once again, against my better judgement, I’ve decided to do another National Novel Writing Month. I almost didn’t, but then I did. To make matters worse, because I found I did better when I wrote by hand last year–more or less–I’ve decided to write this year’s novel by hand. This has its advantages and disadvantages.
The biggest disadvantage is that I eventually, if I wan’t to make the novel work, have to learn to read my own handwriting. This is more annoying than difficult but it’s still annoying.
There’s also the problem of word count. NaNoWriMo allows participants to use the Lorem Ipsum random text to validate novels, but that requires actually counting handwritten words. I’ve decided to use the DIY notebooks I made several years ago, mostly to clean them out and free up the space. For several days over the past months I counted the words in my morning pages and reached a rough average of words per page. One page equals about 190 words, although I’m going to count them as 185 just to be safe. This means, because each pad is 65 pages, one pad is around 12,025 words. I’ll need to use a little over four pads to finish the 50,000 words.
Most of these are gone now ,but I hope to get rid of the rest this November.
This doesn’t clean out much, now that I think about it.
The advantage of the pads is that I can write anywhere with them, including on the train and, hypothetically of course, in class while my students are working. (Not that I would ever do that. No. Of course not. Of course I wouldn’t…) I won’t have to worry about batteries dying or software crashing or start up times.
I’ve also decided to use my TWSBI Diamond 580 as my “official” pen. It’s already my workhorse pen; it holds a lot of ink; and I usually fill it with a “bulletproof” ink that dries quickly and doesn’t smear when it gets wet.
The business end of the TWSBI 580 in front of bourbon: the generator of bad ideas that seem like really good ideas
If I run out of ink, well, I can probably find a couple other pens lying around somewhere.
When I first got my hands on the Eighty Pages Volume 7 notebook the first thing I did was rub my hands across the paper. I was immediately impressed.
The manufacturer had responded to requests by fountain pen users by switching to a smoother paper called, according to their website, “Plain Medium Super Smooth” paper. The deep blue cover and red binding stitching looked great. I also noticed, as I compared it to other notebooks, that it had shrunk a bit. Volume 2 had been about the size of a Field Notes notebook, but Volume 7 was passport sized. This meant it fit perfectly in my passport sized Midori Traveler’s Notebook.
The Eighty Pages notebook next to an MD paper insert in my Traveler’s passport sized cover.
The passport sized Traveler’s cover from the top with the Eighty Pages Volume 7 fitting quite well.
V7 on top of V2. The cover on V2 has cracked despite only being on my desk. V7 has been in my pocket for two months.
My biggest concern, of course, was how the “Plain Medium Super Smooth” paper would handle fountain pens. I broke out my pens with the wettest nibs and runniest inks and put it to the test.
Once again, I was impressed. I started using it as my food diary, which let me test it with every pen I own.
In general, it handled all the inks extremely well. There was a mild bit of feathering, especially with the wettest inks, but there was almost no bleed through or ghosting. The only bleed through came when I had to cross something out or when I tried to make it bleed. For example, Noodler’s Apache Sunset when put down by a flex nib in full flex both feathered and soaked through.
The front side showing the feathering when I applied a lot of flex.
The back side of the same page showing bleed through only where I tried to make it bleed.
The Eighty Pages Volume 7 is now one of my favorite notebooks. The size is perfect as is the number of pages. I hope they put out more notebooks with the same kind of paper.
If they don’t, I face the dilemma of how to properly use the two I have left. (And yes, I really do worry about such things.)
Today I took our youngest out on a Daddy/Daughter Date (whilst our oldest stayed home and “studied” for her mid-term exams tomorrow). By request, we saw the movie Bakuman, which is based on the manga of the same name.
I was struck by three things in the movie: 1) how reliant it was on sound even though it was a movie about visual images; 2) how it may be the most effective example of native advertising I’ve ever seen; and 3) how much of a pen nerd I am to try and figure out what pens and pencils were being used.
Bakuman is the story of two high school students who come together to create a manga worthy of being included in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. The movie tracks their trials and tribulations and although you’ve probably seen this movie before in other forms and know what’s going to happen, the way it happens is often done surprisingly well.
For the uninitiated, Jump and its publisher Shueisha are the grandfathers/grandmasters of all manga magazines in Japan (and probably the world). Jump‘s history includes Mazinger-Z (which came to the USA as Tranzor Z and spawned the Shogun Warriors toys), City Hunter, Dragon Ball, Hunter x Hunter, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece and Death Note, and those are just the ones people in the West might know.
(Note: If you recognize none of these you are either completely normal and/or don’t have young kids or relatives.)
Jump‘s earlier incarnation also spawned MahaGoGoGo, which came to the USA as Speed Racer, and one of its affiliates spawned All You Need is Kill, which begat the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow. (At one point, in the closing credits, the camera spends two minutes scanning over a bookshelf full of Weekly Shōnen Jump titles.)
Jump and its offices are major stars in the movie, but the other stars are the pens they use. After the protagonists have decided to collaborate on the manga, Mashiro Moritaka, played by Takeru Satoh, picks up a dip pen that used to belong to his manga artist uncle–the uncle’s death years before is a major plot point in the movie–and begins to draw with it. He’s immediately impressed by how much more expressive it is than a ball-point pen or a pencil. (The pen geek in me was going “damn straight, brother, damn straight” and trying to figure out a way to bring She Who Must Be Obeyed to the movie, if only for that part.)
The best part about that scene is the excellent sound design as the pen scratches across the paper. It was enough to bring chills to the spine of this pen addict. In fact, one of the movie’s best accomplishments is the different sounds of the different pens and pencils on paper. At one point, the scratch of the nib serves as the snare drum part in a music video sequence where the anime they are drawing is projection-mapped onto the paper and the room around them. (You can see bits of it in the trailer here. Note: it’s all in Japanese.)
Of course, the whole time any pens were on screen I was doing a Rainman monologue: “I think it’s a Copic, I don’t think it’s a Pigma Micron. I think it’s a Copic. It’s definitely not an Ohto. I think it’s a Copic.” Given that there were no complaints from other viewers, including our youngest, I’m pretty sure I kept that internal monologue internal.
The movie’s weakness is that it relies too much on its Sakanaction soundtrack. The music is excellent, but it’s often overwhelming as if the director were saying “Listen! This is awesome!” as it stops moving forward for a short (with one exception) music video.
It also suffers from a noticeable lack of women. Weekly Shōnen Jump is apparently staffed completely by men and the only woman to get a speaking part disappears early. Nana Komatsu plays Miho Azuki, Moritaka’s love interest and muse. In the few scene’s she’s actually around, Komatsu does a good job, but she’s mostly there to smile and look radiantly beautiful. As such, she is always shot in glowing, angelic soft focus (which you can even notice in the trailer). There were comic moments where she is in angelic soft focus and the person she is talking to is shot in regular light. At first I thought she might be imaginary, but she was apparently real.
The rest of the actors are well cast. However, because they are based off a manga, they walk the line between wacky and good. One manga artist has a brass knuckles phone case and gets his accurate fight depictions by having his friends take pictures of him being kicked and punched. However, when his work is accepted by Jump, he giddily announces his acceptance over the pachinko parlor loudspeaker. Another strips down to work while another drinks lots of sake and acts depressed.
For no particular reason other than soundtrack filler, there is a manga style fight between Moritaka and his collaborator Akito Takagi (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) and their rival Eiji Niizuma, played by Shota Sometani. They fight with ink and pens to excellent music and at first it’s kind of funny, but it goes on way too long.
The most impressive acting happens near the end when Niizuma and Moritaka come together over the latter’s drawing table. I won’t spoil it too much, so let’s just ask “what would you do if your rival was scribbling on your true love’s face?” Satoh’s reaction is brilliant–and proves he can act–and it was not even close what I was fearing was about to happen.
I was glad our youngest dragged me to it and I would happily take our oldest and/or She Who Must Be Obeyed to see it. I think it’s also worth seeing, even if you don’t like manga. (Also, pen and stationery addicts should definitely stay for the closing credits. There’s a taste at the end of the trailer.)
Tokyo, during the season of Awesome, is an excellent place to walk around with a perfect stranger. In my case, the stranger was imported.
A guy I know only through social media and bulletin boards involving pens and paper, managed to manipulate his way into getting to work in Japan for a couple weeks. Since I had the day off, I volunteered to show him places he could spend his money whilst using the “I’m totally just being a good Samaritan, dear, and totally no going to buy anything” excuse with She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Her response was “I know you’re not going to buy anything” and then she gave me instructions to buy something. (Note: She meant “you’re not going to buy anything fun”.)
I met the stranger, lets call him Pen Master Dan, at his hotel, which is conveniently located across the street from the Pilot Pen Station (link in Japanese) which was inconveniently closed for Silver Week. His hotel is also conveniently located down the street from Ginza and the vintage pen shop Euro Box (link in Japanese), which is inconveniently closed on Wednesdays.
I did get him to the fountain pen floors of Ito-ya and through a quick tour of the new Ito-Ya building where we played a game of “You can play with mine if I can play with yours” with fountains pens at the notebook testing table.
I then took him to Loft to try out a few more notebooks.
The entire time we were traveling, Pen Master Dan was giving me a master class on pens and notebooks. (I didn’t know how little I actually knew until we started chatting about various pens.) Luckily I had several pens and notebooks and could take notes.
After that I took him to Shinjuku and one of the most dangerous place in Tokyo for pen addicts: Kingdom Note (link in Japanese) which is especially dangerous as they were having a sale on used pens. Once there we encountered a friendly pen addict from Hong Kong who told us the exclusive inks had already sold out. This was a bad start to this part of the trip as Kingdom Note doesn’t sell its custom inks on line. It also meant the only inks on sale were inks Pen Master Dan could get anywhere and that’s not what he wanted.
The devil took me and enabled my enabler powers and I pointed Pen Master Dan to a set of Kingdom Note exclusive pens. The devil suddenly took him and he asked to see one.
I had to play translator at that point, which was a questionable decision as the handful of questions I asked the clerk resulted in Pen Master Dan being forced to buy the pen. (Something like that.)
The clerk then tortured us with samples of the ink we couldn’t buy (unless we camp out early in the morning on Saturday when the next batch is more or less scheduled to arrive). She did give Pen Master Dan a converter full of one of the inks with specific instructions to finish it before he got on the plane lest he or his luggage end up decorated with it.
Finally, I took Pen Master Dan to Yodobashi Camera where I had to buy the item I’d been instructed to buy and Pen Master Dan bought a part for his camera.
At this point, there was a near disaster. It ended happily, though, and left us both with the lesson, “If you love something, don’t freaking set it down in the middle of the store and then walk off.”
Free stuff is overwhelming my desk. It’s created a level of clutter that’s actually begun to mess with my brain. I could solve this problem rather easily, but I’m not actually ready to review any of the stuff.
One of the curses of getting free stuff and then deciding to do long term use reviews of it all is that 1) you have to use the stuff, 2) you have to use the stuff a lot, 3) you can’t use all the stuff at once, and 4) you have to leave the stuff out where you can see it so you don’t forget to use it.
Because of this, both sides of my desk are currently occupied by clutter. The left side has a stack of notebooks, most of which I got at the ISOT and a few I bought because I saw them at the ISOT. The right side has pens, most of which come from the ISOT, but a couple that I bought have bled over to the left side.
The two piles merged into one giant pile of clutter.
To test the pens, as I’ve mentioned before, I write morning pages and random notes with them so I can see what happens to my writing hand if I use the pen a lot. I also use different kinds of paper to see what happens to the pen and the ink on expensive paper, ordinary copy paper, and reused paper. I carry them around to see how well they handle travel and abuse.
With the notebooks, I test them with different fountain pens and different kinds of ink to see how much they show or bleed through. The problem with this is I then have to keep them out on the desk so I can remember to take pictures of the results. Taking pictures involves other steps that get put off.
I’m also pondering a way to test durability by carrying the notebooks around for no reason and writing in each one every day to see how well the spines hold up.
But, that’s a future plan. Until then there are just the piles and the possibilities.
Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But…there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit… a darkside.
The darkside is always there, waiting for us to enter – waiting to enter us.Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. —Tales from the Darkside opening and closing voice overs
Any writer will tell you that it is possible to improve something and still manage to ruin it. I’m afraid one of my favorite stores just did exactly that.
After the Ginza Blade Show, because I was in Ginza, I decided to stop by Itoya and check out its brand new building. I was disappointed that they went with a glass front building. That style is trendy in Ginza now and I thought it looked too much like several of the large clothing stores nearby.
The red paperclip in front of G Ito-Ya, the main store. Very modern and very boring. The paperclip is cool.
That was a mild disappointment, but it was inside that really ruined it for me. The old Itoya was badly organized and to find something you had to explore the narrow passages between the stacks of different goods. It was dark and kind of creepy, kind of like an old bookstore where you’re always afraid the top shelf is going to give way causing you to die in a cascading failure of books.
(Note: Yeah, I understand the safety aspects of the design especially in an earthquake prone country. I just don’t care.)
The new Itoya is minimalist and brightly lit. On some of the floors I thought they weren’t finished moving things until I realized there was a method to minimalist madness. It’s an art gallery for a few select goods that are carefully displayed around the edges and at little islands in the center. The old store was the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is being hidden.
The best thing about the store, in all fairness, was the notebook level. They’ve installed a kind of “bar” where you can mix up your own notebook and have it made by the clerk working the counter. (I believe they’ve copied this from another store.) They also have a table where you can sit and mark up dozens of sample notebooks and test the paper with your own pens. At some of the displays they’ve placed other samples you are free to mark up.
I took the opportunity to test the fountain pen friendliness of several notebook brands (more on that in a future post).
Behind the main store, across the alley, is K. Itoya which still houses the fountain pens and ink. I went there for a few minutes to look around. It, too, is laid out more like a museum than a store.
I bought a notebook but otherwise didn’t stay very long. I’ll go back another day when I’m in a better mood and feel like exploring all twelve floors a little more.
Note: I did not realize wine would be served later in the day. If I had I might have liked it more.
A shaky panorama of the entire front. Impressive, but too brightly lit.
During the ISOT, a young guy almost let me ruin a notebook before an older, wiser man realized what I was about to do and answered my question before I did.
I was in the Sanyo Shigyo booth which featured a collection of random items with paper covers and I was about to subject the top two pages of a thick 352 page notebook/notepad called the Paper Mille-Feuille to my wettest fountain pens. The Paper Milles-Feuille features a tough paper cover that, if I understood the designer correctly, was layered and compressed to make it feel like board. It was square and glue bound on one side and I couldn’t tell it was supposed to be a desktop notebook or a giant notepad. (It would depend on how well the binding held up.)
The paper was smooth but before I tested it, the older man told me it wasn’t fountain pen friendly and ink would bleed through. Not wanting to ruin the notebook I took his word for it. The younger man assured me they were working on finding paper to make it fountain pen friendly and wanted to know if I would buy it. I said, as diplomatically as possible, that I already had too many notebooks but others I knew might like it.
I also suggested he have some paper samples nearby for people to try.
The Mille-Feuille next to a Field Notes notebook. Wide angle distortion makes the FN look giant.
In fact, I spent a great amount of time convincing notebook makers to make small, fountain pen friendly notebooks. The DESIGNPHIL booth had several new MD notebooks that are, for the most part, fountain pen friendly but other booths did not. To prove it, DESIGNPHIL was handing out small notebooks made from their paper.
The DESIGNPHIL booth was awesome. (And bigger than my apartment. This is only half.)
MD Notebooks in the DESIGNPHIL booth. The Bottom right notebook has a paper cover that feels like leather.
At other booths I suggested the pencil case makers have leather versions of their products. As much as I like my nylon Nock Co pen cases, they won’t age as well as leather. Lihit Lab, which makes some popular pen cases, didn’t have much that I liked. Even their large carry-alls were designed for people who only carry one or two pens. (I’ve heard of such people existing, but I don’t know anyone who’s actually seen one. They are Bigfoot to me.)
Part of Lihit Lab’s booth. You can see that the carry-all on the left only has slots for two pens.
Then there were the oddities. I mentioned before that King Jim, which specializes in oddities, had a vibrating pen for helping you massage your neck when you’ve been writing too long. These are interesting, but it’s not something I’ve ever actually wanted.
That’s not a stylus at the top; it’s a button that triggers a massage.
The also had a Pen/Stylus with a nock. Undeployed it’s a styulus; with the nock depressed, it’s a ballpoint pen. I know myself too well and I know that scratched screens would ensue with something like that.
This is a ruined iPad waiting to happen.
The most unusual, though, as if a vibrating pen weren’t unusual enough, were the leather slip covers/carriers for Yamato liquid glue. Yamato glue is ubiquitous and cheap. A couple bottles can be had for around a hundred yen and everyone I know in Japan has at least one bottle somewhere in their house. Putting a leather slip cover on it would be like having a leather carrying case for a Bic Cristal. It may look cool but you’re turning a cheap product into an expensive accessory.
These look kind of cool but don’t seem necessary. Also, what keeps the bottle in the cone?
There were a couple other oddities worth mentioning. One company, and I neglected to write down the booth’s name, had notebooks made from random paper, some of it rough, dark graph paper that seemed more useful for show rather than for use. They also had folio sized blank books that seemed as if they were destined to be guest books for an artists desktop sketch book. Or they were just for display, I still can’t decide which.
Like all things in Japan it began with a speech. Then there was another speech. I felt both speeches in my bones because I was standing near the speaker and the volume was set to “STUN”. The speeches were followed by introductions and a ribbon cutting ceremony. And then I got in with no one realizing I was an impostor.
Today was the first day of the 26th International Stationery & Office Products Fair Tokyo (ISOT). When I first heard about it, I applied to enter as a member of the press, using my blog and promises to write things for the Pen Addict and other blogs and was surprised to get accepted.
To get in, all I had to do was present two business cards. My name was located on the official list and I was given a press pass and an arm band that allowed me to take photos.
My press pass and the floor plan of the venue. We were free to visit all areas.
The ribbon cutting ceremony. The speaker set to STUN is below the gentleman on the left.
Once inside we had, if I’m doing the math correctly, 10 US football fields’ worth of exhibits we were free to visit.
The ISOT section occupied about 2 1/2 football fields with the biggest booths being near the entrance.
Some scale: The white structure along the ceiling is halfway to the far wall. One third of the venue is behind me.
Because it was a trade show that was not open to the public, it was common to enter a booth and hear a group of people making valuable deals on the spot. Most booths had at least one table set aside for business meetings and one booth attendant who could speak English and who always tried to get you talking.
I, of course, went looking for pens and paper. Except for Zebra and Kuretake, not many of the major pen manufacturers had booths. King Jim had some pen oddities, including a pen with a built in spot vibrator that activates when you press it against your neck.
I did manage to find a number of interesting pen manufacturers from Korea and Turkey. Because I was from the USA they wanted to know if I knew how to get them access to the US market. I said, “pay me a couple million dollars and we’ll figure it out together”. Well, that’s what I should have said. Instead I suggested they contact Jetpens.
The most interesting exhibits were a Korean pen manufacturer who sells clicky markers and white board markers, and a Turkish manufacturer (link in Turkish) with some good cheap ballpoint pens. Kobeha (link in Japanese) had SUITO Cleaning Paper which is designed to clean fountain pen nibs. I’ll review that in the future but it already received a stationery product of the year nomination.
Kobeha also produce a range of fountain pen friendly notebooks and had a couple Lamy Safari pens available for testing. I scoffed at those pens and pulled out my bandolier of fountain pens and started breaking the hearts of the booth attendants. The paper had no bleed through or ghosting but you had to wait seven or eight days for ink from a wet nib to dry. At one point I had an audience and a Chinese greeting card maker gave me his card and asked if I knew any printing companies. I said “pay me a couple million dollars and we’ll figure it out together” but then said I didn’t know any personally.
Along the way I picked up several random notebooks, including a couple A7 sized notebooks made with 68# and 52# Tomoe River paper, and a few pens and pencils that I’ll review and then probably pass on to others.
Swag. The orange pen is Korean, the others are Turkish. The pencil is Korean. The SUITO cleaning paper is on the left.
I’m glad I went and I wish I had time to go again tomorrow and make some more contacts. I found that with a press pass if I stopped, asked a few questions and took notes in my Field Notes America the Beautiful with their pens they would eventually give me something in exchange for a business card. In a couple cases I’ll talk about in future posts, I recommended products they could sell to the Pen Addict community.
Now I have a lot of reviews to do. Oh, and exams to mark. I can’t forget the exams.
Periodically, when I have lots of stuff to do, I avoid it by decluttering and purging a bunch of stuff.
(Note: I used to bake cookies as a form of avoidance, but it’s too warm for that and the butter required is suddenly a rare and precious thing here in Japan.)
(Note: The cookies were awesome and usually handed out to fellow graduate students, but that was another post.)
Part of my decluttering process involves sitting down and listing stuff. I started with pens and fountain pens and was shocked to see how many I actually have (23) and that doesn’t include the two on the way (well, at least one; the other is confusing. Long story).
Of those 23, seven are already retired and at least four of those have enough value to be sold. A few others just aren’t interesting enough to use or keep (which is part of the purge). One of my tests is to clean up a pen and put it away for a while and see if I miss it. If I don’t, it’s a candidate for the purge.
After that, I sat down and listed the bottles of ink I’ve acquired. That was even more shocking: 14 types in 16 bottles–also a long story. One of those bottles, despite my best efforts to like it, is crap. Two of the others just aren’t interesting enough to use or to keep. Some of them I’ve had for a long time and the bottles are half empty but I’ve counted them anyway.
Part of what happens is the acquisitions happen over time. A pen here; a bottle of ink there; both at the same time back over yonder. Inevitably, old purchases get put away and replaced but by new ones but rarely are all the purchases in the same place at the same time. Putting them in one place, I’ve just discovered, is much better than sitting down and making a list. Not only will you be shocked by the pile of stuff but you will forget to add one or two things if you don’t actually look at them.
Even as I wrote this post I realized I’d forgotten to list three pens.
The other list I make is which of the listed items I use regularly and why. That’s down to a half a dozen pens and six inks. I recently bought larger bottles of two inks I like a lot, which is why I have 14 inks in 16 bottles.
What inspires all this is my desk. I like it cleared off because moving stuff around becomes a kind of distraction, especially when it’s time to dust. (And especially, especially, as right now, when it’s WAY past time to dust.) Over time, though, the acquisitions, and a few delayed decisions and projects begin to pile up and take up space. I get annoyed by it and clean things up and move things out.
Then I start getting more stuff, mostly because I now have space for it. Sigh.
I’ve mentioned before how I spent a year or so studying Japanese calligraphy and then stopped. Before I stopped, though, I acquired a few skills along with several brushes, paper, weights, felt pads, ink sticks and grind stones.
Most of that gear has either been thrown away, sold or, in the case of the brushes and the ink sticks, passed on to our girls. The only things I’ve kept are a couple seals.
In Asia, for lots of complicated reasons, the preferred method of sealing contracts and official forms is with a literal seal. The seals, known as “chops” in Chinese speaking countries, are called “Hanko” (判子) in Japan. (That’s “Han” as in “Han shot first” and “ko” as in “coke”.)
Every family, mine included, as an official seal for official documents as do most companies. (Actually, I suspect they all do.) The official seals are made by craftsmen and the hanko is officially recorded. As I understand it, every hanko is different, even those made for people with the same last names. Those are usually round and the coolest kids, depending on your point of view, have hanko made from ivory.
Mine are made from soap stone and are the more artistic versions. They were used to sign my calligraphy works (which are buried somewhere and unavailable for reproduction). Because I was in a “this is awesome” philosophical mood, I opted for kanji and then spent time working out a proper pretentious artist’s name.
The two hanko and paraphernalia next to the results on Tomoe River paper (top) and Japanese washi (bottom).
The larger version reads 旅人道延, or Tabibito Doen (the latter word is two syllables and pronounced very close to Dwayne). The high concept, which made sense at the time, was that since I was travelling, I’d use the kanji for traveler (旅人) and the letters for road/path (道) and stretches (延). Thus, the traveler’s road stretches (with an implied “into the future”.) This hanko was used on larger works (the paper was about a meter long).
The small version is only the letter “do” (pronounced “doe”) and was used on smaller works.
I don’t remember how much they cost, but I also acquired a couple cleaning brushes and a tub of cinnabar/vermilion paste which is a remarkable concoction of castor oil and vermilion powder and other ingredients that has stayed usable for over 18 years.
The cinnabar (or vermillion) paste with the ox bone smoothing spatula. Sharp eyes will notice a third stamp.
I was surprised, after a couple do-overs, that the placement of the seals was as important as the calligraphy itself. A perfect work could be ruined by a badly placed stamp or a smudged one.
I use them now to mark the backs of my notebooks. I could make the small one my official stamp, but that would involve paperwork.
I also acquired, as a gift, a hanko hand made by a student. It has his name Nakashima (Naka) 中 and Shima (しま) with the Naka around the outside as a frame. I mostly keep it because he carved it to look like the man in Munch’s “The Scream”.
My three hanko and how they look on paper.
I’m tempted to have it recarved and turned into my official stamp, but it’s the only reason I remember the student’s name. Instead I’ll keep in on my desk as a way to express my mood.
(Note: If you’re interested in carving your own hanko, you can buy a kit here.)
(Note 2: hanko are also referred to as “inkan” (印鑑). I’ve not been able to tell if there’s a difference as they seem to be used interchangeably.)
